How to display many-to-many field as a list of text input fields?

Question

When I display the ToolBoxEditForm it uses a multiple select field. But what I want is a form that lets the user edit each tool he has in the toolbox as a text field. I cant figure out how to do this with the many-to-many field.

class Tool(models.Model):
    tool_name = models.CharField(unique=True, max_length=200)
......

class ToolBox(models.Model):
    tools = models.ManyToManyField(Tool,max_length=300)

class ToolBoxEditForm (ModelForm):
    tools = ???
    class Meta:
      model = ToolBox
      exclude  = ('user', 'popularity',)

Answer 1

I'm doing a bit of guess work, as I've played with the ManytoManyField and forms for different purposes. I added the custom field manipulation in the constructor.

I suppose a similar trick can be used to create text fields. This example should create three extra text fields, which you can later validate.

class ToolBoxEditForm(forms.Form):

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(ToolBoxEditForm , self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        for i in range(3):
            self.fields['many_to_many_field_%d' % i] = CharField()